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Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE that can improve your productivity with HP 3000 systems. Send your tips to john@burke-consulting.com.

Edited by John Burke

We got two DDS-3 tape drives in August and ordered 125-meter tapes. We have been using the 120-meter tapes we had for the old tape drives until the new ones came. The new tapes came today. The vendor sent 150-meter tapes that say DDS-4, instead of the DDS-3 tapes that we ordered. Can they be used in the DDS-3 drive anyway?

John Burke and Warren Bunnell reply:
No, in fact they will not even load.

Denys Beauchemin adds:
You state that you have a DDS-3 drive and that you have been feeding it 120-meter tapes. I am sure by now you realize that you have been using the DDS-3 drive as a DDS-2, same speed and recording capacity (1Mb/second for 4Gb). In order to obtain the real throughput of the DDS-3 device and the recording capacity (2MB/second for 12GB), you must use DDS-3 125-meter tapes.

Now for the 150 meter tapes. Indeed, you cannot use them in the DDS-3 drive. The length really has nothing to do with it; rather the 150-meter tape is thinner than the 125/120/90/60 meter tapes and is subject to stretching and breakage in a non-DDS-4 device. DDS-4: 5.6 microns, DDS-3: 6.8 microns.

What’s the command for aborting all user sessions? We’re trying to develop a controlled way of ensuring no one is logged on prior to system backup.

John Clogg replies:
The LOGOFF command will do it, but that’s kind of a big hammer. Note that LOGOFF will also abort the session that issues the command, unless you specifically exclude it. It also prevents any new jobs or sessions from logging on, so it must be followed by a LOGON command. Both commands can only be issued from the console, I believe.

Jeff Vance adds:
The ABORTJOB script (and/or UDC) on Jazz at jazz.external.hp.com/src/scripts/
index.html could work for you. If you download the script and name it ABORTJ, you could do the following: :abortj @ This will abort all jobs and sessions on your system, except for “you.”

We recently installed an N-Class machine and have an interesting problem. We do not get any messages on the system console. No tape mounts, no TELLOPs, nothing. I have checked to make sure the console is, in fact, assigned to the console (LDEV 20). So that appears to not be the problem. And yes, it is logged into the system as OPERATOR.SYS. The system otherwise seems to be operating just fine. You can answer console messages, but the only way to see them is with the RECALL command. I’m really scratching my head on this one.

Elizabeth Campbell and Jon Backus reply:
It sounds like Easytime. If anybody has even run Easytime interactively, it will cause this to happen. The batch job doesn’t even have to be running for the console messages to be diverted.

I’m working on a 967 and a 927, both running MPE 6.0. I need to change the IP address of the systems. In NMMGR I have found where to change the IP address of each system, but my problem is that these two systems are connected with a dsline so that files can be copied back and forth. Where in NMMGR do I go in order to update the IP addresses so that when a DSLINE command is given the system will be able to find the other HP?

Paul Courry replies:
When you enter NMMGR, press f2 to get into the NSDIR file, then press f1, Update directory, to list all the DSline connections. Type in the one you want and press f6, modify.

[Editor’s note: this is not necessary in most circumstances since when you try DSLINE the source system will send out a PROBE request using the machine name. For example, I have a machine with a node name of GERI, short for GERONIMO. GERI does not appear in any host file, DNS or NSDIR file, yet I can very easily DSLINE to it. Caveat: this might not work across a pair of routers with bridging disabled, making DNS or a HOSTS file necessary in this case.]

Along this line, Keven Miller notes:
I have erased my NSDIR entries. Just place the appropriate entries in your HOSTS.NET.SYS file, and DSLINE will find your other HP 3000s. For me HOSTS is much easier to edit.

If you have enabled DNS with a RESLVCNF.NET.SYS file, you can get the patch to enable NSSWITCH, which allows use of both files, RESLVCNF and HOSTS. I have preferred to check my HOSTS file first before DNS. My NSSWITCH file currently contains hosts :

files[SUCCESS=return NOTFOUND=continue] dns

[Editor’s note: The current NSSWITCH patches are NSRGD65A for MPE 6.0; NSRGD68A for MPE 6.5; and NSRGD69A for MPE 7.0.]

I’m new to MPE, and I thought I’d be clever and get around the need to use Editor by invoking the Posix shell and running vi. When I do that, I get the following: “Unknown terminal ‘HP700/94’.” Why?

Ken Hirsh replies:
Specifically, in the shell, use the command export TERM=hp2392a, or, before you go into the shell, setvar term “hp2392a”

We recently downloaded and installed text2pdf on our HP 3000. The installation went fine and we can create PDF files in the Posix shell as long as we are signed on as MANAGER.SYS. Our intentions are to use this under MPE (we are running MPE/iX 5.5) and create some of our batch reports in PDF format and emailing them. What do we need to do to access text2pdf from other users so we can create pdf files in our jobstreams?

John Burke and Mark Wonsil reply:
Simply copy it to some group with appropriate capabilities. PUB.SYS works, but I would not recommend it. A better choice would be to copy it to a group and account where you keep miscellaneous utility programs. There are no specific capabilities required for text2pdf.

Does the Store-to-Disc option allow for a ‘parallel store,’ analogous to a parallel store to tape? For example, when a parallel store to tape is performed, the store writes to two or more tape drives at the same time. Is there a parallel store-to-disc option that allows for the store to write to two or more disc files at the same time (as opposed to running multiple store-to-disc jobs)?

Gavin Scott and Joe Taylor reply:
Yes, the same syntax for parallel stores works for disk files as well as tape files. I really don’t know if you would get any benefit from this, but if you went to the trouble of building your STD files on specific disks, then it might be worthwhile.

What is the recommended life or max usage of DLT tapes?

Denys Beauchemin replies:
www.dlttape.com will have lots of information for you. One thing to remember is that when they talk about the number of passes (500,000 passes), it does not mean number of tape mounts.

Talking about SuperDLT tapes, the tape is divided into 448 physical tracks of 8 channels each giving 56 logical tracks. This means that when you write a SuperDLT tape completely you will have just completed 56 passes. If you read the tape completely, you will have done another 56 passes.

The DLTIV tapes (DLT7000/8000) have a smaller number of physical and logical tracks, but the principle is the same.

The number of passes for DLTIIIXT and DLT IV tapes is 1,000,000. It’s 500,000 for the DLTIII. The shelf life is 30 years for the DLTIIIXT and DLT IV tapes and 20 for the DLTIII.

I have a DETAIL dataset (with 26 fields in it) that has its four key items associated with Automatic Masters. I would like to add fifth item from this dataset also to be associated with another new Automatic Master (or may be Manual Master). How do I accomplish this? Does redefining the field into a key item associated with an Automatic Master automatically add all those entries into the Automatic Master?

Jerry Fochtman replies:
This is a fairly easy task with any of the third party tools (DBGeneral, Adager or Flexibase). The steps involved would be specific to the particular tool you may have. If you’re unsure of what steps are involved, contact the vendor’s support group for assistance. And, yes, all the items get added to the Automatic Master.

It seems that JINFO only works against my jobs that are either executing or waiting. If I do “CALC JINFO(‘#J1234’,’EXISTS’) it comes back TRUE for executing and waiting jobs but if #J1234 is in the ‘READY’ state it comes back false.

while jinfo(‘!hplastjob’,’StdlistSPstate’) <> “READY”
echo processing...
pause 5
endwhile

I’m trying to wait for the job to finish, but if the job is already finished by the time it gets to the loop, it fails with an error (Job does not exist. (CIERR 3042)). This happens even though the ‘JINFO’ documentation states that READY is one of the possible responses for this option. Why is this happening?

Wyall Grunwald and Jeff Vance reply:
JINFO also works on scheduled or :breakjob’d. If you don’t see the job/session via :showjob then JINFO will not see it either.

In your loop, there may be a window where STDLIST output is READY and the job still exists (probably small if the condition exists at all). More likely, the documentation should be changed to remove that state, even though READY is a valid spoolfile state.

The PAUSE job=#Jnnn command is a good way to wait for a job to terminate. If the job is already done, the PAUSE command returns immediately. You can also place a maximum number of seconds to wait for the job to complete and PAUSE will return once the job finishes or that max seconds expires, which ever occurs first. I believe that PAUSE will be more efficient than JINFO in a WHILE loop.